Monday, November 08, 2004

It's The Electoral System, Stupid

Wow.

We - the people close-to-being-united to reform this broken electoral system - are pissing off a lot of people.

People that should be on this side. The right side.

I'm not waging a battle to prove John Kerry won the election. I know, and knew, that the Bush Administration would never have let that happen. If they were on the losing side, they would have fought as hard as they could to delegitimize the results. They would have blamed it on Osama's video, if they had to.

Too many people were in denial about this, and really thought John Kerry would become President. It never would've happened folks.

Regardless. The electoral system must be fixed.

Many of the same people waging war against this campaign were not with us when it counted in the last four years. It's about timidity. They were afraid to criticized the Administration for failing to defend the country on September 11th. They were afraid to recognize the Patriot Act as a hazard to our rights and a concession to terrorism. They were afraid to recognize that the war on Iraq was wrong before it happened. They came to our table too late...and, now, as a result, our troops are about to face an unwinnable harrowing descent into (what-they-even-describe-as Hell. But this Hell is a product of the "wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time." Not Satan.

Yell about us all you want. Attack us all you want. But the truth is that you're playing into our hands.

If it wasn't for us you wouldn't even be talking about Black Box voting. If it wasn't for us you would be spending even more time dissecting the Democratic platforms and trying to win a battle using spiritual and quasi-religious language which will detract a good amount of the party's base, and more importantly, push away further the people who know the evil of America's two-party system.

I am not renouncing my membership in the Democratic Party. But if I have to help break it down a little bit in order to win the larger war, then full speed ahead I say!

The Democratic Party is part of the reason why our electoral system is infected. Campaign finance reform is just as important as equal standards in voting. We need to remove Democrats, as well as Republicans, from the equation: neither party should be able to corrupt America's votes. Our vote is what makes this country. And, the truth is, because of the influence of big corporations and foreign interests on our major parties, our system has never been copacetic.

But I gotta tell you. My efforts are directed at aiding the Democratic Party not destroying it. I believe that the Democratic Party, at this juncture, more accurately reflects the will of the people. It's the spoilage that is being ignored.

The spoilage. The uncounted votes. The votes that are not even computed by the news organizations. The votes that will bring justice to this country. The votes that will reflect the will of the people.

In four years, my hope is that the system will be improved, at the very least. All the votes will be counted, all of them, no matter the odds or mathematical probablities, before the election is decided. Every voter will be able to know for sure if their vote counted. And every voter will know for sure who they voted for.

The Democratic Party made a grievous mistake. I grew to love John Kerry but he wasn't the best candidate. The best candidate was the winner of the popular vote in 2000 (which didn't matter then...but seems to now that we've lost it): Vice President Al Gore. But for whatever reasons, he decided to withdraw from consideration. Not that there was any kind of a movement by the Party to convince him to reconsider.

The commercials for Gore 2004 should have been "Vote Al Gore. This time your vote counts."

All this talk about Hillary and Baraka and mid western candidates. There is only one choice for the Democratic Presidential Candidate for 2008: John Edwards. Let's fix the system. Let's make sure every vote counts. Let's make commercials in 2008 like "Vote John Edwards. This time your vote counts."

Contributors

"Or take this guy, Ron Brynaert, a tenacious (lefty, stand alone) investigator with an instinct for where information and proof and the jugular are. He's a natural: Why isn't he on someone's I-team?" Jay Rosen, June 6, 2005.